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Trump Is Not Above the Law

Courts across the country agree that our environmental laws must be enforced, not broken.

Liza Koifman/Alamy

If we’re paying attention to President Trump’s all-out assault on our environment and health, these can feel like dispiriting times. In our courts of law, though, where we bring falsehood to heel and hold our government to account, it’s a different story.

In recent weeks, federal courts have handed down repeated rulings that reject Trump’s efforts to weaken or ignore essential safeguards and call on him to enforce the laws we all depend on to protect our environment and health. The message from courts across the country is clear: Our environmental laws must be enforced—not broken.

The U.S. District Court in Los Angeles ordered the EPA to protect water quality and safety by banning or regulating stormwater discharges from commercial and industrial sites. The U.S. District Court in Fresno, California, issued a ruling that cleared the way for evidence showing how the Trump administration’s proposed changes to the WaterFix tunnel project under the San Francisco Bay–Delta would fall short of what the law requires to protect endangered fish.

NRDC litigators played a key role in each of those four cases—represented by our partners Earthjustice in the chlorpyrifos case—as part of our mission to use our laws and courts to hold polluters, and our government, to account.

The Trump administration is hell-bent to put polluter profits first—and put the rest of us at risk. That doesn’t mean we have to let them get away with it. We have the power, as American citizens, to hold our leaders to account. That’s what government by the consent of the governed is all about. And that’s why no one, in this country, is above the law.